Staff Reporter
A CROWDFUNDING campaign has been launched to help a 22-month-old boy called Robin survive a high-risk cancer.
The fundraiser was set up by his grandmother, Elizabeth Parker-Gleeson, and is aimed at putting together the money needed to help cover costs while the toddler is treated in Barcelona.
According to Robin’s grandmother, he is receiving immunotherapy treatment for his cancer, which is a neuroblastoma – a kind of cancer that forms in immature nerve tissue in the adrenal glands, neck, chest, or spinal cord.
Robin will be receiving the treatment for the coming five months in the Sant Joan de Deu Hospital in Barcelona, and it will, Elizabeth explains, ‘offer him the best opportunity possible to live a long and healthy life’, one that is free of hospitals.
The illness was discovered a year ago when his parents took him to hospital because he would not stop crying and appeared to be in pain.
After the cancer was discovered and he was treated in Great Ormond Street Hospital, his parents were told that his best hope was immunotherapy, but that only two hospitals offered what he needed: Sant Joan de Deu, and another in New York.
His parents opted for Spain given that his grandmother has been living on the Costa del Sol, in Malaga, for the last 24 years.
The aim is to raise €90,000 every month to help the family cope with the costs of the treatment, which will run to a total of €500,000.
“In his short life, between the UK and Spain, Robin has already had to go through several months of chemotherapy, two major operations and countless general anaesthetics – he has been fighting cancer for almost half his life,” Elizabeth explains.
“Despite all this, Robin continues to thrive and develop; he is about to walk and is learning new words every day – the latest word he has learned is ‘gazpacho’.”
Another crowdfunder launched in the United Kingdom by his parents has already managed to collect nearly €300,000, according to online newspaper La Opinion de Malaga.
You can donate to the fund by following this link.
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